Byzantium on Scotland, Hospital Food and the 1970s: Medieval News Roundup

For our fellow medievalists, here are some of the news and interesting posts that we came across in the last week:

Finally, this image, created in 1512, shows the first mention of the phrase: "Throw out the baby with the bath water".

Found in Narrenbeschwörung (Appeal to Fools) by Thomas Murner.

Call for Papers: 7th Annual University of North Texas Medieval Graduate Student Symposium

The University of North Texas is sponsoring the 7th Annual Medieval Graduate Student Symposium on Thursday and Friday April 11th and 12th, 2013. 

“To Move and Be Moved: Physical and Psychological Transportation and Transformations in the Middle Ages.”

Keynote Speakers 

Dr. Janet Snyder, Professor of Art History at the West Virginia University, author of Early Gothic Column-Figure Sculpture in France: Appearance, Materials, and Significance (Ashgate 2011).

Dr. Susan Boynton, Professor of Musicology at Columbia University, author of Shaping a Monastic Identity: Liturgy and History at the Imperial Abbey of Farfa, 1000-1125 (Cornell University Press, 2006).

Call for Papers 

While we will entertain papers on any topic from any discipline of Medieval Studies—Art History, Religion, Philosophy, English, History, Foreign Languages, Music, we particularly welcome those that engage the multifaceted topic of “To Move and Be Moved: Physical and Psychological Transportation and Transformations in the Middle Ages.”

We encourage submission of papers that have been submitted and/or delivered elsewhere. Travel subvention of $300 will be awarded to the best paper. Deadline for submission of a 300 word abstract is December 1, 2012. Selected full papers will be due March 30th. Paper Abstracts of 300 words should be sent to:

Mickey.Abel@unt.edu or Dr. Mickey Abel Associate Professor, Medieval Art History University of North Texas 1155 Union Station #305100 Denton, TX 76203-5017

See http://art.unt.edu/medieval-symposium/ for more details

Call for Papers and Sessions: Prophecy, Divination, Apocalypse

Plymouth State University
33rd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum
Friday and Saturday April 20-21, 2012

Call for Papers and Sessions: “Prophecy, Divination, Apocalypse”

We invite abstracts in medieval and Early Modern studies that consider how prophecy and divination functioned in personal, political, religious, and aesthetic realms. How did ideas about the future impact the present? Papers need not be confined to the theme but may cover many aspects of medieval and Renaissance life, literature, languages, art, philosophy, theology, history and music.

Click here to read this call for papers from Medievalists.net

Call for Papers: Society for the Public Understanding of the Middle Ages

The Society for the Public Understanding of the Middle Ages (PUMA) would like to invite applications for membership, and announce its annual calls for papers for the International Congress in Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Kalamazoo, 2012 and the International Medieval Congress (IMC) in Leeds, 2012.

We invite abstracts for the following sessions at the 2012 ICMS and IMC. Abstracts (between 250 and 500 words) should be submitted electronically to publicmiddleages@gmail.com to the attention of Paul Sturtevant, and should indicate clearly your mailing address and phone number. If you need special equipment for the talk (digital projector, etc.), let us know when you submit your abstract. All abstract submissions are due by 15th September, 2011.

Click here to read the full article from Medievalists.net

Call for Papers – The Language of Maps: Communicating through cartography during the Middle Ages and Renaissance

A colloquium and exhibition at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford

Thursday June 23 to Saturday June 25 2011

Historic maps have broad appeal in contemporary cultures around the world. One reason for this – it might be thought – is because the ‘language of maps’ is universal and straightforward, but is it? How do maps communicate to us? How do they work? This Colloquium seeks to explore these important questions by bringing together scholars whose interest lies in the visual and textual ‘languages’ of manuscript and printed maps from the medieval and Renaissance periods of European history. Original paper contributions on the theme of ‘communicating through cartography’ are sought that will help further our understanding and appreciation of the complexity of medieval and Renaissance maps and map-making. Papers may be theoretical, empirical or methodological in orientation, as long as they address ‘how maps work’.

Click here for more information from Medievalists.net

Call for Papers: Hortulus: The Online Graduate Journal of Medieval Studies

Our upcoming issue will be devoted to representations and interpretations of exile – political, spiritual, or intellectual – in art, chronicles, letters, literature, and music from the Middle Ages. Expulsion, banishment, or prolonged separation from one’s homeland was experienced by many in the medieval world; it is likewise one of the earliest topics in literature.

Click here to read this article on Medievalists.net

Preparations begin for the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Calls for papers and preparations are now underway in advance of the 46th International Congress on Medieval Studies, which will be held at Western Michigan University from May 12-15, 2011. This annual gathering of medievalists is one of the largest academic conferences in the world, drawing in over three thousand participants.

Over 600 sessions have been proposed, covering a wide number of topics from history, literature, art, and more. The various sessions are broadly organized into two groups: sponsored Sessions, which are organized by societies, associations, and institutions, such as De Re Militari: The Society for Medieval Military History, or the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, St. Louis University; and special Sessions are organized by individual scholars and ad hoc groups. The organizers set predetermined topics, which are often narrowly focused.

Click here to read this article on Medievalists.net 

Texas Medieval Association hosts 20th Annual Meeting in September

The Twentieth Annual Meeting of the Texas Medieval Association will be taking place this year at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, from September 24-26, 2010.

n the call for papers the organizers note that this year’s theme is “Majesty, Memory, and Mourning in the Middle Ages,” but that papers are welcomed on all aspects of medieval history and culture, including medieval art, languages, literature, medievalism, and music....

Click here to read the full article from Medievalists.net

Call for Papers: Love, Friendship, Marriage, at the Plymouth State University Medieval and Renaissance Forum

Plymouth State University
32nd Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum
Friday and Saturday April 15-16, 2011

Call for Papers and Sessions
“Love, Friendship, Marriage”

We invite abstracts in medieval and Early Modern studies that consider how secular and religious love, affection, and devotion were perceived and expressed in a variety of contexts. Papers need not be confined to the theme, but may cover many aspects of medieval and Renaissance life, literature, languages, art, philosophy, theology, history and music. Student sessions with faculty sponsorship welcome.

This year’s keynote speaker is Dr. Thomas Luxon, Professor of English and Cheheyl Professor and Director of the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of Learning at Dartmouth College. Dr. Luxon has published widely on Milton, Shakespeare, and Early Modern England. He is the author of Single Imperfection: Milton, Marriage and Friendship (Duquesne University Press, 2005), and Literal Figures: Puritan Allegory and the Reformation Crisis in Representation (The University of Chicago Press, 1995), and the creator/editor of The Milton Reading Room, a web edition of Milton’s poetry and selected prose.

The conference will conclude with a lesson in Renaissance dance and a performance by the Ken Pierce Dance Company. Students, faculty, and independent scholars are welcome.

For more information visit www.plymouth.edu/medieval

Please submit abstracts and full contact information (email and post mail addresses) to Dr. Karolyn Kinane at PSUForum@gmail.com

Or via US mail:
Dr. Karolyn Kinane, Director
Medieval and Renaissance Forum
Dept. of English MSC 40
17 High Street
Plymouth State University
Plymouth, NH 03264

Abstract deadline: January 21, 2011
Presenters and early registration: March 15, 2011

Please send any further inquiries to:
Dr. Karolyn Kinane PSUForum@gmail.com

Conference aims to bring medieval, early modern and Latin American historians together

An interdisciplinary conference to be held at the University of Notre Dame this fall is making a final call for papers to explore the issue surrounding similarities between late-medieval Iberia and its colonies in the New World. “From Iberian Kingdoms to Atlantic Empires: Spain, Portugal, and the New World, 1250-1700” is being hosted by the university's Nanovic Institute for European Studies and will take place on September 17-18, 2010.

The conference organizers hope that their interdisciplinary theme will lead to better co-operation and research between historians of different periods. John Moscatiello, chair of the conference planning committee, said, “The committee settled on this topic right away because we feel strongly that medievalists, early modernists, and Latin Americanists must coordinate their teaching and research programs.  Right now, these groups tend to conduct their research in relative isolation from one another, even though scholars have long suggested important links between late medieval Spain and the New World.  Part of the problem is built into the structure of universities themselves because graduate students are trained in either medieval studies or Latin American studies with little reference to the other field.  The result is that the current historiography has not provided the specific contours of what a comparative, global history of late medieval and early modern Iberia might look like.  What are the methodological pitfalls of integrating medieval and Latin American historical research?  What are the best sources for deeply comparative work?  How do we periodize Iberian history in a global context?  Or, conversely, are such comparisons overdrawn and not worthwhile? This conference hopes to be one step in the direction of answering these questions and bringing these disparate fields into a meaningful dialogue.

“Here at Notre Dame, there has been a dramatic series of transformations in both our medieval Iberian and Latin American programs. For the first time ever, the Medieval Institute is under the leadership a specialist in medieval Iberian history, Remie Constable, who is busy overseeing the expansion of our programs in Byzantine and Islamic studies. Dayle Seidenspinner-Núñez, a professor of medieval Spanish literature, now serves as a dean in the College of Arts and Letters and Sabine MacCormack has been a tireless and highly effective advocate of developing the program in Latin American studies.  Our undergraduate students are enrolled in Quechua courses and have drawn from the resources of the Nanovic and Kellogg Institutes to conduct original research in Europe and Latin America.”

The conference organizers also have announced that the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies will be publishing a special issue of the conference proceedings in 2012 which will include six to eight articles that originate from this conference. John Moscatiello adds that the journal's editors “have been enthusiastic about the conference from the outset because they are committed to bringing medievalists, early modernists, and Latin Americanists into meaningful dialogue with one another.  In fact, the recent obituaries for convivencia and Reconquista that have appeared in the Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies (and other journals) have further underscored how unreliable these categories have become for our research programs.  The future of medieval Iberian history, like the future of medieval studies in general, will have to be comparative and global in its orientation and will have to push medievalists out of their comfort zones”

The final day to submit a proposal for a paper is May 1st. You are asked to email an abstract of 250 words, a cover letter, and a curriculum vitae to Iberia.conference@gmail.com. For more information about the conference, please go to http://iberiaconference.eventbrite.com/

See also our earlier article: From Iberian Kingdoms to Atlantic Empires: Spain, Portugal, and the New World, 1250-1700

See also our Interview with Olivia Remie Constable

17th Annual ACMRS Conference: Performance and Theatricality in the Middle Ages and Renaissance

The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies (ACMRS) has issued a Call for Papers for their 17th Annual ACMRS Conference, which will be held in Tempe, Arizona from February 10-12, 2011.

The ACMRS Annual Conference is an interdisciplinary conference that provides scholars with the opportunity to present research on all topics related to the study of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. While the conference always has a focused theme, ACMRS welcomes papers on any topic related to the study and teaching of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.

The theme for the 2011 conference is Performance and Theatricality, a platform for critical interpretations of the dramaturgy, versification, and staging of Medieval and Renaissance life. Proposal topics could include, but are not limited to, oral-memorial performance (minstrels, jongleurs, scops, etc.), song, instrumental music, plays/dramas (liturgical, mystery plays, moralities, sotties, farces, etc.), reading aloud, the performative use of texts/images/objects, images of performance, ceremony and ritual, discourses on performers and performance (sermons, prohibitions, etc.), and self-representation (identity as performance).

Selected papers related to the conference theme will be considered for publication in the conference volume of the Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance series, published by Brepols Publishers.

The conference keynote speaker will be Pamela Sheingorn. Dr. Sheingorn specializes in the European Middle Ages, especially in visual, cultural, and women's history. Her research areas include hagiography, drama, and visual culture. Her books include: Myth, Montage, and the Visible in Late Medieval Manuscript Culture: Christine de Pizan's Epistre Othea (2003, co-authored with Marilynn Desmond); Writing Faith: Text, Sign, and History in the Miracles of Sainte Foy (1999, co-authored with Kathleen Ashley); The Book of Sainte Foy (1995); Interpreting Cultural Symbols: St. Anne in Late Medieval Society (1990); and The Easter Sepulchre in England (1987). Her current research projects focus on representations of the late medieval family, medieval masculinities, a cultural history of Joseph the Carpenter, and illuminations in medieval drama manuscripts.

Before the conference, ACMRS will host a workshop on manuscript studies to be led by Timothy Graham, Director of the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of New Mexico. The workshop will be Thursday afternoon, February 10, and participation will be limited to 25 participants, who will be determined by the order in which registrations are received. Email acmrs@asu.edu with “conference workshop” as the subject line to be added to the list. The cost of the workshop is $25 and is in addition to the regular conference registration fee.

The deadline for proposals is 9:00 p.m. Mountain Standard Time on 17 October 2010. Proposals must include audio/visual requirements and any other special requests. Subsequent a/v requests may not be honored without additional charge. In order to streamline the committee review process, submissions will only be accepted at http://link.library.utoronto.ca/acmrs/conference/ from 1 June through 17 October 2010.

For more details call 480-965-9323 or email acmrs@asu.edu.

From Iberian Kingdoms to Atlantic Empires: Spain, Portugal, and the New World, 1250-1700

Call for Papers: The Nanovic Institute for European Studies at the University of Notre Dame announces an interdisciplinary, international conference on the history and literature of the Iberian empires from the High Middle Ages through the conquest of the New World. Although many scholars have acknowledged similarities between late-medieval Iberia and its colonies in the New World, few have offered precise answers to the questions that arise from these similarities. What is the relationship, for example, between “inquisition” in a medieval context and in the New World? Is it meaningful to compare minority Muslim communities in fifteenth-century Spain to indigenous peoples in the New World? How were the legal and political instruments of late medieval kings foundational for early modern Europe and Latin America? This conference encourages new ways of approaching the topic, based on the conviction that medievalists, early modernists, and Latin Americanists can make meaningful contributions to each other’s fields.

Panels will likely include the following topics:

• Medieval and early modern Inquisition
• Global exploration and conquest
• Law, politics, and administration
• Language, literature, and translation
• Race, minority populations, and identity
• Evangelization, “Christianization,” and conversion

The conference will take place at McKenna Hall at the University of Notre Dame on Friday, September 17 and Saturday, September 18, 2010. Papers from history and literature departments are welcome. Contributions from graduate students are especially welcomed and a prize of $200 will be awarded to the best graduate student paper as determined by a faculty panel. The authors of all accepted papers will be fully compensated for one night’s lodging and will be provided with a travel subvention of up to $100. All contributions should be sent to John Moscatiello, Chair of the Conference Committee, at Iberia.conference@gmail.com by May 1, 2010 and include an abstract of 250 words (for a twenty-minute presentation), a cover letter, and a curriculum vitae.

Featured speakers:

• Felipe Fernández-Armesto, University of Notre Dame
• Paul Freedman, Yale University
• Michael Gerli, University of Virginia
• Kenneth Mills, University of Toronto
• João Paulo Oliveira e Costa, New University of Lisbon

On Friday, September 17, the Medieval Institute will host a dinner and reception in honor of Jocelyn Hillgarth, Professor Emeritus of History, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto in celebration of the acquisition of his personal collection by the Hesburgh Libraries of Notre Dame.

To register for this event, visit http://iberiaconference.eventbrite.com.

Let the Games Begin: The Medieval World at Play

The third annual Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies Conference, hosted by the Humanities Research Institute, University of Sheffield, will take place this June and the organizers have put out a call for papers. The theme of this year's conference is: Let the Games Begin: The Medieval World at Play.

The organizers invite postgraduate students and early career researchers working in any field of Medieval Studies to submit abstracts for papers that approach issues concerning games and sports in medieval culture.

Suitable topics may include, but are not limited to:

Children’s games / play / toys
Courtly games
Chess / card / board games
Drinking games
Love games
Competitions
Jousts / Tournaments / War games
Fairs
Hunting / Hawking
Sports: archery, hammer-throwing, quarter-staff contests, stoolball, hurling, gameball, wrestling etc

Dr Katariina Nara, a Research Associate at the University of Sheffield and one of the conference organizers, said to Medievalists.net, "We were considering a few options for this year's theme, and as we try to follow the research trends in medieval studies in general, game/play/sport seemed to offer not only a cutting edge theme, but the greatest possible variety of approaches across disciplines within Medieval Studies.

"This is very important when organising an interdisciplinary conference as we want to attract scholars from a variety of fields such as history, archaeology, literature, languages, art and architecture. We also have two established researchers in mind for possible keynote speakers, and their research was a further inspiration for our theme."

The previous two Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies Conferences had their own unique themes. The first, Locating the Voice: Expressions of Identity in the Middle Ages, was held in 2008, and Battle and Bloodshed: Representations of War in the Middle Ages was held last year. The proceedings of our first conference were published last December under the title In Search of the Medieval Voice: Expressions of Identity in the Middle Ages.

Dr. Nara and the other organizers are also involved in the Online Froissart Project, which aims to create a freely available online tool for textual, palaeographical and iconographic research on Froissart´s Chronicles. She notes, "Froissart was already strongly present in our last year's conference on medieval warfare, and considering his interest on not only battles but also tournaments and jousts, I would imagine a paper or two on Froissart's work would feature in this year's conference as well."

They ask for proposals of no more than 250 words for a twenty minute paper in English to be sent with your name, institution and contact details either by e-mail to gameplayconference@shef.ac.uk or by post to the address below by 29th March 2010.

They have already received several inquiries about delivering papers, and Dr. Nara adds, "We have only send out one call for papers to date, and usually most proposals come in over the last two weeks before the deadline."

For more information about the Conference, go to http://www.shef.ac.uk/gameplay-conference

Call for Papers: Intimacy: Family, Fealty, and Friendship in the Middle Ages

The City University of New York-Graduate Center in New York is hosting the Annual Graduate Student Conference on Medieval Studies on Friday, March 12, 2010.

The theme for this year's conference is Intimacy: Family, Fealty, and Friendship in the Middle Ages

Organizers provided these details about the conference: "According to Aristotle, the social unit upon which political states depend is the family. Indeed, the family is a microcosm of human activity, an environment that, in many ways, determines how its members interpret the realities of their social, cultural, political, economic, and religious circumstances.

"The family, however, is not a static social construct. From Late Antiquity to the Late Middle Ages, the changing landscape of the medieval world has helped to shape the nature and objectives of various kinship structures. Whether in the political and economic conflicts between the entrenched nobility and rising mercantile class, or in the religious conflicts resultant from the proliferation of heterodoxical or heretical groups, the Middle Ages involved constant attempts to renegotiate and redefine relationships among people both within and without the networks.

"We invite papers from graduate students in all academic disciplines that address the role of the family and gender and the ways these categories relate to the construction of various cultural and socio-political identities. The CUNY Graduate Center Annual Medieval Studies Conference is one of the only student-run conferences in the Northeast. We hope to provide a stimulating and encouraging atmosphere within which students can share new work, shape ideas, and create new discourses.

"Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes (approximately 8-9 pages of double-spaced text). Please submit a 250-word abstract and a brief biography (1-3 sentences) as an attached Word document to medieval.study@gmail.com by January 20, 2010. Please include the title of your paper and your e-mail address along with your submission."

Possible topics include: Spiritual Devotion, Bridal Mysticism, Ecstatic Union Family, Bonds and Marriage Beds, Husbands and Wives, The extended family, Parents and Children, Fealty, Liege-Lord Bonds, Chivalric Code, Romance, Courtly Love, Friendship, Adulterous Bonds, The value of friendship, Conflicts of Love and Loyalty, Heterosexual/Homosexual Relationships, Homosocial/Heterosocial Bonds, and The priority of friendship over other intimate bonds.

Call for Papers: ‘Terra incognita’? Making space for medieval geographies

The Royal Geographical Society in London will be holding its annual international conference from September 1-3, 2010. The organizers of the session: ‘Terra incognita’? Making space for medieval geographies have issued this call for papers:

Historical geographers appear to be increasingly occupied with the modern or post-Enlightenment world, with ‘medieval geographies’ becoming, for many in the field, a terra incognita. Yet over the past century, the Latin, Byzantine and Arabic worlds of the Middle Ages (c.500-1500CE) have been a key focus for geographical study. Whether in charting geography’s medieval history and historiography, or in reconstructing spatial histories of medieval landscapes, territories and societies, geographers have thus recognized the importance of geographies before the modern age. However, during the past three decades, these geographies ‘in’ and ‘of’ the Middle Ages have noticeably shifted further to the margins of Anglophone historical geography, at a time when, paradoxically, the geographical and spatial are growing concerns among medievalists, for example in art and literary history, and in architecture and archaeology.

In the context of these shifting disciplinary terrains, this session seeks to make space for medieval geographies by providing a forum for recent and ongoing studies that encompass both geographies in and of the Middle Ages. Papers of an empirical or theoretical nature are sought, particularly those engaging in critical ways with medieval geographies and which encourage further cross-disciplinary exchange with medievalists in cognate areas. Far from being a terra incognita, the session will expose some of the contemporary resonances of medieval geographies, and one of its intended outcomes is to entice historical geographers to consider the spatial and temporal continuities, discontinuities and connections that run between the ‘medieval’ and the ‘modern’.

Paper proposals and abstracts should be sent to: Dr Keith Lilley (k.lilley@qub.ac.uk) by January 31, 2010.

The session is being organized by Dr Lilley (Queen's University Belfast) with Veronica Della Dora (University of Bristol) and Stuart Elden (University of Durham).

For more information about the conference, please go to: http://www.rgs.org/ac2010

Call for Papers: St. Thomas Becket and the Vernacular Medieval Literature

Monte Verità in Switzerland will host the International Medieval Conference next year. The conference is taking place from October 17-22 on the theme 'St. Thomas Becket and the Vernacular Medieval Literature'.

In their call for papers, the programme committee states:

For Medievalists the Becket-Henry affair presents an ideal case study: the career of Thomas Becket, culminating in his murder (1170) is undoubtedly the best documented event in the twelfth century. The dramatic martyrdom of the Archbishop of Canterbury generated an unusual number of biographies, letters, histories. New avenues of research are now opening up for Philologists, since recent studies have begun to show that Becket's eruditi wrote not only in Latin, but also in vernacular (i. e. Anglo-Norman and French).

The language of government and diplomacy was Latin, but for Becket's circle, literature was too important to be excluded from the remoralization of the Plantagenet's life. Lay and clerical domains of worship were certainly distinct, but they were not neatly divided, either liturgically or physically. Nothing supports the polarity between a "lay piety" of "private" and "devotional" literature and a clerical art that was "public," "regulatory," and "liturgical." The Conference will be divided into two themes (consisting of several sub-divided sessions)

A) 1155-1170: "Warriors of God and Culture. Thomas Becket and his eruditi"
B) After 1170. "Perpetuating Myth"

The conference is being organized by the Becket Project, which is led by Carla Rossi of the University of Zurich. The Becket Project focuses on the relations which vernacular authors forged with those eruditi, and on the cultural program pursued by vernacular authors and by the circle of Canterbury scholars, whose purpose was to establish traditional, epochal genealogical and religious foundations for courtly Anglo-Norman society.

Several scholars have already committed to giving papers at the conference, including Michel Zink, Michael Staunton, Donna Bussell and Ian Short.

Click here to learn more about the conference and the Becket Project.

Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict (Symposium)

Conference Announcement and Call for Papers

Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict

The Second International Symposium on Crusade Studies

February 17-20, 2010

Saint Louis University

The Second International Symposium on Crusade Studies will be held at Saint Louis University (St Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.) on February 17 to 20, 2010. The title of the Symposium, Crusades: Medieval Worlds in Conflict, will this year place the focus on the “worlds” of the Mediterranean and the impact of the crusades on them. Plenary speakers include Michael Angold (University of Edinburgh), Ronnie Ellenblum (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Eva Haverkamp (Rice University), Ahmet T. Karamustafa (Washington University), Christopher MacEvitt (Dartmouth College), Suleiman Mourad (Smith College), Jonathan Phillips (Royal Holloway, University of London), and John H. Pryor (University of Sydney).

Phase I of the symposium will take place on the evenings of February 17, 18, and 19 when two distinguished speakers will deliver plenary lectures of general interest followed by questions and discussion. Phase II will begin on Friday, February 19. It will consist of scholarly papers of twenty minutes in length delivered in concurrent and plenary sessions.

Call for Papers. Twenty minute scholarly papers will be delivered on February 19 and 20 in concurrent and plenary sessions. All topics relating to the crusading movement are welcome. Phase II will conclude with a plenary roundtable discussion, reception, and a banquet.

Abstracts should be submitted by mail, fax, or email by December 1, 2009 to:

Second International Symposium on Crusade Studies
Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies
Saint Louis University
3800 Lindell Blvd.
Saint Louis, MO 63108
Fax: 314-977-1603

Email: cmrs@slu.edu

For more information go to http://crusades.slu.edu/symposium/ or call 314-977-7180.

The International Symposium on Crusade Studies is a quadrennial activity of the Crusades Studies Forum at Saint Louis University. It is sponsored by grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Saint Louis University.

Trebuchet to Cannon: Military Technology 1000-1600

Call for Papers:

Trebuchet to Cannon: Military Technology 1000-1600

A conference and workshop to be held at the Danish Medieval Centre, Nykøbing, Falster, Denmark,

26-29 July 2010

www.middelaldercentret.dk/

For the last two decades the Middelaldercentret in Denmark has carried out research into the construction and performance of medieval military technologies. Since 2001, the Ho Group (dedicated to the study of early gunpowder and gunpowder weapons) has met to experiment with gunpowder recipes and reconstructed artillery. The tenth meeting of the Ho Group will be an international conference to discuss all aspects of medieval military technology, including artillery, siege engines, gunpowder and cannon, and other weapons. The Organizing Committee extends an invitation to all those interested in this area—textual scholars, experimental archaeologists, curators and historians—to attend and present their work and discuss solutions to, and further problems in, the understanding of military technologies in the Middle Ages. The conference will include a series of workshops and hands-on demonstrations by the Ho Group of medieval technologies, including trebuchets, gunpowder and incendiary weapons, and reconstructions of cannon.

The conference will be four days in length, with three days of papers and workshops, one day-long excursion, and a closing banquet with Renaissance fireworks. The venue will be the Middelaldercentret (Danish Medieval Centre) and the adjacent Femern Link Hotel & Conference Centre. The primary language will be English. Presented papers will be considered for publication.

The organizers request a brief abstract for a paper proposal or an expression of interest to attend without presenting a paper by 15 November 2009. Full details of the conference and accommodation fees will be finalized by the end of 2009, with a registration deadline of 15 May 2010.

For more information or to submit your proposal (200 words, along with a brief CV), please contact Robert Smith at <HoX@basiliscoe.fsnet.co.uk>.

Call for Papers - Medieval Conferences

We have posted the details of several calls for papers for various medieval studies conferences that will be taking place next year.

This includes the 45th International Congress on Medieval Studies, which again takes place at Western Michigan University on May 13-16, 2010. Click here to access the Calls for Papers for nine different sessions.

Plymouth State University is holding its 31st Annual Medieval and Renaissance Forum on April 16-17, 2010. This year's theme is “Time, Temporality, History”. Click here for details.

The 4th Annual Sacred Leaves Graduate Symposium is taking place at the University of South Florida on February 18-19, 2010. This year's theme is "Encountering the “Other” in the Medieval World: Textual Examinations of Resistance and Reconciliation Across the Traditions, 500-1500". Click here for details.

If you wish to post your call for papers or conference announcement, please contact us at medievalists.net@gmail.com

Call for Papers: Imbas Medieval Conference

Imbas: The National University of Ireland, Galway, Interdisciplinary Postgraduate Medieval Conference, November 13-15th 2009.

We would like to invite all postgraduate students of medieval studies to Imbas, an interdisciplinary medievalists’ conference being held in the Moore Institute at NUI Galway from November 13-15th 2009. This conference welcomes delegates at all stages of their research from all areas of medieval studies including language, history literature, art, archaeology and philosophy. The theme for 2009 is Alliances. Delegates are encouraged to view the theme as a broad suggestion rather than in any way restrictive.

Papers might deal with but are not limited to such topics as:

Religious, political and military alliances
Relationships between cultural institutions
Marriage
Commerce and economics
Patronage
Rebellion and heresy
Marginality

A selection of papers will be published in our new established peer-reviewed journal, Imbas: The Journal of the National University of Ireland, Galway Postgraduate Medieval Studies Conference. This journal will be made available via our website and open-access journal databases. All panels will be recorded and made available as podcasts. The committee are also delighted to offer a number of travel bursaries to delegates on a competitive basis. Further information is available on our website http://medieval.starlight.ie/cms/view/13/ and on the conference blog, http://imbasnuig.blogspot.com/.

Abstracts of 250 words for a twenty-minute paper (with ten minutes allowed for questions) should be submitted by October 9th 2009. Abstracts can be submitted to imbasnuig@gmail.com or forwarded to Imbas/Grace Windsor, Dept. of English, National University of Ireland, Galway, College Rd, Galway.